Officials caution the objects may not be plane debris, but shipping containers or something else

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumed Friday in the southern Indian Ocean with long-range reconnaissance aircraft looking for possible debris from the jetliner in one of the most remote locations on Earth.

Aircraft from Australia and the United States have staggered departures to an area roughly 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, where two objects were captured on satellite and described as possible pieces of the plane, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

The first plane, an Australian air force P3 Orion, arrived in the search area early afternoon local time, the authority said.

Given the distance from Australia to where the objects were spotted by a commercial satellite, the aircraft will only have between two and three hours to traverse the search area before having to start the return journey, the maritime authority said.

Calling it the best lead so far to the whereabouts of the airliner that vanished 14 days ago with 239 passengers and crew, Malaysia interim Transportation Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters the find "gives us hope."

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Along with the aircraft, a motley collection of merchant ships are heading to the search area, where they will join a massive Norwegian cargo ship diverted to the area Thursday at the request of Australia.

The sailors aboard the Norwegian ship worked throughout the night looking for the objects, said Erik Gierchsky, a spokesman for the Norwegian Shipowners Association.

"All men are on deck to continue the search," he told CNN. "They are using lights and binoculars."

Authorities were hoping for better results after poor weather hindered Thursday's search for the debris.

Even before suspending the search Thursday night,authorities cautioned the objects could be something other than plane wreckage, such as shipping containers that had fallen off a passing vessel.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the news to the world in a statement in parliament. Officials then gave more details in a briefing closely watched by relatives of some of the missing.

For the loved ones of the passengers and crew aboard the flight, the news of the possible find first announced by Australian was met with mixed reactions.

"It strikes me as just one more lead that may or may not come true," Sarah Bajc, whose fiance, American Philip Wood, was aboard the plane, told CNN. "So it's enough to make us all anxious again after a couple of days of quiet, but, you know, I'm cautiously pessimistic that it's not a piece of the plane. "

Satellites captured images of the objects about 14 miles (23 kilometers) from each other and about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) southwest of Australia's west coast. The area is a remote, rarely traveled expanse of ocean far from commercial shipping lanes.

The commercial satellite images, taken Sunday, show two indistinct objects of "reasonable size," with the largest about 24 meters (79 feet) across, said John Young, general manager of emergency response for the Australian maritime agency.

They appear to be "awash with water and bobbing up and down," Young said at the news briefing Thursday.

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 48 photos

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 37048 photos

Relatives of passengers from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 console each other outside the Malaysia Airlines office in Subang, Malaysia, on Thursday, February 12. Protesters demanded that the airline withdraw the statement made in January that all the passengers aboard the plane are dead. The plane, which disappeared on March 8, has not been found.

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A policewoman watches a couple whose son was on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cry outside the airline's office building in Beijing after officials refused to meet with them on June 11, 2014. The search for the missing plane has been ongoing since early 2014.

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Members of the media scramble to speak with Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department, at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 27. Data from communications between satellites and missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was released the day before, more than two months after relatives of passengers say they requested that it be made public.

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Operators aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield move Bluefin-21, the U.S. Navy's autonomous underwater vehicle, into position to search for the jet on April 14.

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A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks out of a window while searching for debris off the coast of western Australia on April 13.

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The Echo moves through the waters of the southern Indian Ocean on April 12.

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A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion, on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the search, flies past the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 9.

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A relative of a missing passenger cries at a vigil in Beijing on April 8.

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Australian Defense Force divers scan the water for debris April 7, in the southern Indian Ocean.

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A towed pinger locator is readied to be deployed April 7 off the deck of the Australian vessel Ocean Shield.

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A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks at a flare in the Indian Ocean during search operations on April 4.

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A member of the Japanese coast guard points to a flight position data screen while searching for debris from the missing jet on April 1.

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A woman prepares for an event in honor of those aboard Flight 370 on March 30, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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A Royal New Zealand Air Force member launches a GPS marker buoy over the southern Indian Ocean on March 29.

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The sole representative for the families of Flight 370 passengers leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on March 28, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions.

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A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on March 27.

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Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27.

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People in Kuala Lumpur light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27.

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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight on March 24 in Kuala Lumpur. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived."

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Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24.

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Ground crew members wave to a Japanese Maritime Defense Force patrol plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang, Malaysia, on March 23. The plane was heading to Australia to join a search-and-rescue operation.

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A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 22.

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A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It is a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes are looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia.

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Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on March 20, shows debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could be from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials that they had spotted something raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search.

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Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight.

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A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 19.

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A relative of a missing passenger tells reporters on March 18 in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet.

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U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations March 16, in the Indian Ocean.

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Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on March 13. The search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are expanding west into the Indian Ocean.

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A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13.

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Malaysian air force members look for debris on March 13 near Kuala Lumpur.

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Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12.

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Indonesian air force officers in Medan, Indonesia, examine a map of the Strait of Malacca on March 12.

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A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on March 11.

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Vietnam air force Col. Le Huu Hanh is reflected on the navigation control panel of a plane that is part of the search operation over the South China Sea on March 10.

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A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported March 8. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10.

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A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews before returning to search for the missing plane March 9, in the Gulf of Thailand.

Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who reported his passport stolen in August, shows his current passport during a news conference at a police station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9. Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza were identified by Interpol as the two men who used stolen passports to board the flight. But there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators. Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport.

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Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on March 9 before heading out to the area between Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished.

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Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9.

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The Chinese navy warship Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port early on March 9 to assist in search-and-rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment, underwater detection devices and supplies of oil, water and food.

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Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous with another rescue vessel on its way to the area where contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

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The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea on March 9.

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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8.

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A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

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Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8.

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Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said.

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The objects could be from the plane, but they could be also something else -- like a shipping container -- caught in swirling currents known for creating garbage patches in the open ocean, he said.

"It is probably the best lead we have right now," Young said. "But we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it's really meaningful or not."

It took four days for the images to reach the authority "due to the volume of imagery being searched, and the detailed process of analysis that followed," the agency said in a prepared statement.

The size of the objects concerned David Gallo, one of the leaders of the search for Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

"It's a big piece of aircraft to have survived something like this," he said, adding that if it is from the aircraft, it could be part of the tail.

The tail height of a Boeing 777, the model of the missing Malaysian plane, is 60 feet.

Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said she believes the Australian Prime Minister would not have announced the find if officials weren't fairly sure of what they had discovered.

"There have been so many false leads and so many starts and changes and then backtracking in the investigation," she said. "He wouldn't have come forward and said if they weren't fairly certain."

Although the overall search area spans a huge expanse of 3 million square miles, U.S. officials have been insistent in recent days that the aircraft is likely to be found somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

Until searchers make a confirmed find of debris from the aircraft, the search and rescue operation will continue throughout the search zone, Hishammuddin said.

Even as the focus shifted to the southern Indian Ocean, Hishammuddin said Malaysia was sending two aircraft to search Kazakhstan in central Asia. That's one of the locations along a northern corridor described as a possible location for the aircraft based on satellite pings sent by the plane after air traffic controllers lost contact with it in the early hours of March 8.

India said Thursday it is searching in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, sending four warships and three aircraft to scour the region. That area is far north of the region where Australian forces were leading the search for the photographed objects, but in an area previously identified as a possible crash site for the plane.

Meanwhile, 18 ships, 29 aircraft and six helicopters were taking part in the search in the southern corridor, where search efforts were intensifying in the area around the Australian satellite find.

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In addition to the Norwegian car carrier Höegh St. Petersburg, which arrived in the area Thursday afternoon, a second merchant ship was expected to arrive Friday night. The Australian naval vessel HMAS Success is steaming to the site but remains "some days away," Hishammuddin said.

China plans to send its icebreaker and research vessel Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, which is currently anchored in Perth, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The icebreaker will take four or five days to reach the search zone, according to the news agency.

Malaysia's navy has six ships with three helicopters heading to the southern Indian Ocean to take part in the search, a Malaysian government official said.

Other angles

Although much attention was focused on the ocean search, investigators continue to follow other leads in the plane's disappearance.

Among the many theories put forth since the plane's disappearance is that one or both of the pilots were responsible in some way for the aircraft's disappearance, especially in light of revelations that appear to show that a sharp, unplanned turn in the flight path had been programmed into the plane's flight management system before one of the pilots gave a routine sign-off to Malaysian air traffic controllers.

On Thursday, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation told CNN that an FBI team is confident that it will be able to retrieve at least some files deleted from the hard drive of a flight simulator owned by Flight 370 Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

Investigators will also analyze websites that Zaharie and co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid may have visited recently, the official said on the condition of anonymity.